Lib at Large: Roy Zimmerman's funny songs about ignorance, war and greed

WATCHING THE RETURNS from the New Hampshire Republican primary on TV may not be everyone's idea of a good time. But that's how satirical singer-songwriter Roy Zimmerman and his wife and frequent collaborator, Melanie Harby, celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary one night this week.

"We made a big party out of it," he said. "There was a lot of fun to be had."

There was also a lot of new material to be gathered for additional verses to his song, "Vote Republican," the sardonic opening track of his latest album, "You're Getting Sleepy." The conceit of the song is that you'd have to be hypnotized to buy into conservative talking points like Mitt Romney's recent assertion that President Obama is promoting the "bitter politics of envy" and fomenting "class warfare." As if we're all jealous of Romney.

In this election year, the San Anselmo-based satirist is hitting the road for the next eight months with the goal of performing "Vote Republican" in all 50 states before the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., in August.

"As I make my way around the 50 states, I'll write a new verse in every state I visit and post it in a YouTube video," he said. "We're gonna drive three hours and do a show, drive another three hours and do a show. By the end of June, I'll have done 98 shows as a kind of Obama surrogate. But I'm tapping into something bigger than that. I'm hoping that by making people laugh I can harness some of the discontent of people who are frustrated with politics as usual."

Another song from the new album, "Hope, Struggle and Change," which Zimmerman wrote with his wife, adds an important word to Obama's last election slogan, and by doing so it's become an anthem of the Occupy Movement. In fact, Zimmerman shot the video for the song at Occupy protests around the Bay Area, including one on Fourth Street in San Rafael.

"Occupy was pretty strong in San Rafael," he said. "But everywhere I've been, there's been a presence of Occupy, even in the red states. Not having one message has been cited by critics as a fault, but all the movement's disparate messages are hung on the spine of economic justice. Occupy could go away today and still it would have been really effective because it's already changed the national debate, which is all about economic issues and income inequality. It's not about the Tea Party anymore."

Zimmerman, who's been called "a latter-day Tom Lehrer" by the Los Angeles Times, isn't sure where his progressive politics came from. He grew up in Sunnyvale, the son of a politically conservative father, a Lockheed missile and space engineer.

In the '60s, he was fascinated by Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman's ability to be funny and politically strident at the same time, but he wasn't particularly political when he went off to San Jose State to study music.

Then, during the 1980s comedy boom, he formed a folk era parody duo called the Reagan Brothers with Marin acoustic musician Stevie Coyle. But his leftist political persona began to take form when he started the Foremen, a socially conscious comedy quartet that toured extensively and recorded four albums, including two for Warner/Reprise, a major label.

"It wasn't until I put the Foremen together that I really hitched my wagon to politics," he explained.

Since leaving the Foreman in 1996, Zimmerman has carried on as a solo act that has been described as "Bobby Kennedy meets Bobby Dylan." He calls his current show "Live from the Starving Ear" (a take on the historic San Francisco nightclub the Hungry I). He admits that he's generally preaching to the choir in the Unitarian churches that are a staple of his tour itinerary. But not always. During a show in a Texas bar, a guy charged the stage, screaming, "This is over." Zimmerman managed to restore order and finish his set with a unifying rendition of the traditional Christian hymn "Shall We Gather at the River."

On "You're Getting Sleepy," his 12th album, Zimmerman takes a swipe at Rick Santorum sanctimony on "I Want a Marriage Like They Had in the Bible." He wrote "The Unions Are to Blame" as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was stripping public employees of their right to collective bargaining. And he points out the absurdity of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to give corporations the same rights as people in "Citizens United."

Those all display his lacerating wit and rapier-sharp lyrics. But "Hope, Struggle and Change" isn't cynical, doesn't take potshots and is unlike anything he's sung before. It's a kind of game changer for him.

"That song has been a revelation to me," he said. "To stand up and sing that, you're saying to people, flat out, 'This is what I believe.' And getting people to sing and clap along, which they do on that song, is a real feeling. It's not just the feeling that I entertained people, or I made a point, or I made them laugh about this or that. It's a feeling that I've actually reached out and touched them."